Holt Renfrew does Vreeland

Well, who would have thunk it. Holt Renfrew’s kickoff to official Toronto Fashion Week, touted as the week’s most patriotic, began with homage not to the maple leaf, but rather to one of America’s famed style icons, 1960’s Vogue Editor, Diana Vreeland. The show, which featured eight of the country’s hottest labels: Jeremy Laing, Pink Tartan, Mikhael Kale, Denis Gagnon, Line Runway, Smythe, Wayne Clark and Wings & Horns, began with a short film depicting the editrix in all her redredred glory, smoking a ciggie while delineating the future of fashion on her typewriter. The film, directed by Bad Day Magazine Editor, Eva Michon, was largely inspired by Vreeland’s legendary column, Why Don’t You, which featured a series of brilliant (if sometimes slightly insane) witticisms like “why don’t you have a yellow satin bed entirely quilted in butterflies?”

“The original inspiration for the video came from [Holt Renfrew Creative Director] John Gerhardt who has a profound appreciation for the amazing Diana Vreeland. It was incredibly fun to create her character with Fiona Green, who assembled an amazing wardrobe, and Claudine Baltazar, who turned my mother in-law, Francine Grainger into Mrs. Vreeland with the magic of a wig,” says Eva. Pretty wild, I’d say, but as anyone who would know from working with the ingenious (and charming, and debonair, and amazing, and blah blah blah) Gerhardt, the whimsical or bizarre is a natural starting point. “Francine was very easy to direct because she is already a very glamorous and fashionable woman. Her office was very fun to recreate too, my cinematographer, Rob Tagliaferri, and I had never shot so much red in a scene before,” she says. Go Eva! That’s what I say…